Review: Samsung Galaxy Nexus

The review was done by aeronauticareview.com who tested the phone under “normal business traveller” conditions. Aeronautica took the phone to multiple airport and hotel WIFI’s and multiple mobile networks. The Galaxy

Like all devices with these glossy displays it can be a challenge to read them when in bright sunny areas. The Galaxy has a brightness and display timeout shortcut on home screens so users can quickly and easily adjust the settings to their current situation. When using autodim, the battery life was extended a bit, but the display is the biggest drain on the battery. It displays pictures, videos and web content well, and the page scaling was intuitive and easy to read. Typing in the portrait mode was a challenge, its ok for a quick text, but if you need to type out a proposal the only way to do it is in landscape.

OS

Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, brings an entirely new look and feel to Android. It has great widgets, notifications, multitasks well. Google synching and Gmail integration was flawless. For security you can choose, face recognition, which is hit and miss, passcode, pattern, and swipe. I had to turn off the face recognition, since in variable lights it forgot who I was.

The autorotation was pretty good, however there were a few angles that I would pick up the phone and it would get confused. Some apps, like Google Docs would not rotate.

Sound profiles have lots of customization, but none allow for a “Phone Calls Only” mode which is what I really need when at home, or overnight in a hotel. That way emergency calls can get through, and the constant push of email will remain silent til morning.

Hardware

The phone only has only 2 buttons, which means everything else goes through the screen. With this super smart phones, we have found that physical buttons have hindered the phone in most cases, great move by Samsung to leave them out.

Photo and Video

We tested this camera inside, outside, moving and still. It performed really well.

Video and sound is good, and the only flaw I noticed was the zoom on the video was a bit choppy, but considering most other camera video won’t even zoom at all, the Galaxy is still a light year ahead.

When I tried to use the time lapse feature, the camera kept freezing and crashed. Panoramic works great, and it shares pictures with ease.

5MP on the backside, 1.3 on the front side for video chats.

Sample Photos

Battery

The specs boast talk time of 6 hours, and standby time of 15.4 days. Well nobody with this phone would talk for 6 hours straight, or leave it in standby for 2 weeks. Here’s how it really goes:

From full charge to 7% battery – 21 hours – under light conditions, facebook, email push, sms, a few short phone calls.

Under heavy usage of video chat or streaming data, it would likely only last 3-4 hours. I initiated a video chat

at 20%, and 3 minutes into it the battery was dead.

Charging is pretty good, it takes about 4 hours to get a full battery.

Browser

The stock browser does a good job of loading all types of websites, and handles forms and online merch sites well. Page scaling and zoom is intuitive and animated pictures and video are handled well.

PROS:

Great look, weight and feel

Customizable UI and developer information

Great cameras and video

CONS:

Bring your charger

lack of customizable autotext and sound profiles

face recognition

Samsung has done a great job on this phone, and I believe is leading the way in the Android OS hardware.